Harvard-Westlake wins back-to-back games vs. rival
Harvard-Westlake pitcher Duncan Marsten squatted and looked at the palm of his hand at the beginning of every inning of Wednesday's game against Notre Dame.
“That's kind of just centering all the energy I have into this hand,” Marsten said, “because that's all I really need.”
The Wolverines offense went to work early and Marsten maintained his focus to help HarvardWestlake to an 8-5 win, beating the Knights for the second time in as many days to remain on top of the Mission League standings.
Roughly 50 professional baseball scouts came out to watch the game, which was flooded with talent between the two teams. Levi Sterling, the No. 40 MLB prospect, started at pitcher for the Knights (5-6-1 overall, 2-4-1 in Mission League) and Bryce Rainer was at shortstop for Harvard-Westlake (10-1-1, 6-0-1), which beat the Knights 2-1 on Tuesday.
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Marsten, a Wake Forest commit, was undeterred in his first career start against Notre Dame and said he had been working on his focus dating to last season.
“It was super exciting to finally face our rivals,” Marsten said. “My brother actually played for Notre Dame and we had a little ongoing rivalry family-wise. But it's always fun to come out here and compete, especially against these guys.”
The Wolverines scored all of their runs in the first two innings. Rainer hit a leadoff double and Cade Goldstein doubled to drive him in. Miguel Villegas delivered a three-run double to finish off the scoring in the top of the first inning.
Sterling drove in Kai Gonzaga, who went 3 for 3, on a sacrifice fly to cut Notre Dame's deficit to 4-1.
Harvard-Westlake tacked on four more runs in the second inning. Jack Laffitte's two-run home run highlighted the inning and alleviated some pressure from Marsten by giving him an 8-1 lead.
“Levi Sterling, whether he goes to Texas or he goes to the draft, he's stellar, top tier,” Harvard-Westlake coach Jared Halpert said. “To score any runs off of those types of arms is fortunate and we were just happy to get a chance to find some grass today.”
Sterling threw for 2 2/3 innings before sophomore JuJu Diaz-Jones came in for 1 1/3 innings. Patrick Arranga, another sophomore, threw 1 2/3 innings and submariner pitcher Nick Ladanza closed out the final inning.
The Knights have only two returning starters from last season — Sterling at pitcher/shortstop and Gonzaga in center field.
Notre Dame had four errors in the game but none were costly. And the Knights came up with some late hits to make up for them.
Gonzaga and Aaron Luna both hit RBI singles to add two runs for Notre Dame in the fourth inning. Its defense held the Wolverines scoreless for the remainder of the game.
The Knights had one last offensive push in the seventh inning when Dominic Cadiz doubled, then Sterling homered over the left-field fence to cut the Wolverines' lead to 8-5.
“I was proud of (Sterling) and the guys,” Notre Dame co-head coach Nick LaFace said. “We talked to the guys and said `hey, turn off the scoreboard and keep competing.”
While one of the Mission League's biggest rivalries is done for the season, the competition continues. Harvard Westlake starts a three-game series against Crespi (4-7, 2-4) on the road on Tuesday. Notre Dame hosts Alemany (6-5-1, 2-3-1) on the same day to begin a threegame series.